Of Generals and Victories

"(O)nce war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to
apply every available means to bring it to a swift end.

"War`s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.

"In war there is no substitute for victory."

Familiar to every graduate of

West Point, the words are from the

farewell address of Gen. MacArthur, to Congress on
April 19, 1951, after he was relieved of command in
Korea by

Harry Truman.

Two years later, however, Dwight
David Eisenhower, a general as famous as MacArthur,
would agree to a truce that restored the status quo ante
in Korea.

For the first time since the War of
1812, the United States was not decisively victorious.
We had preserved the independence of war-ravaged South
Korea. But the North remained the domain of Stalinist
strongman Kim Il-Sung for 41 years.

After Korea came Vietnam. The
United States did not lose a major battle and departed
in early 1973 with every provincial capital in South
Vietnamese hands. But the war was lost in April of 1975,
when Saigon, its

military aid slashed by Congress, fell to an
invasion from across the DMZ.

Vietnam introduced us to what no
generation of Americans save Southerners had ever known:
an American strategic defeat.

Now we are about to enter our
eighth year in Afghanistan and our sixth year in Iraq.
In neither is victory, in the MacArthurian sense,
assured. Indeed,
"victory" may be unattainable, says America`s most
successful general, David Petraeus, who asserts he will
never use the word in speaking of Iraq.


"This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill,
plant the flag and go home to a victory parade."

Why will Operation Iraqi Freedom
not end like Gulf War I, where Gen. Schwarzkopf led the
victorious army up Constitution Avenue? Because,
whenever a truce is achieved through power-sharing, it
often proves to be the prelude to a new war, when the
power shifts.

In Iraq, the Shia-Sunni struggle
remains unresolved. The Maliki regime wants the
Americans gone so it can settle accounts with the
Awakening Councils and Sons of Iraq we armed to
eradicate Al-Qaida. The Kurds are moving to cement
control of oil-rich Kirkuk and expand into Iraqi Arab
provinces.

Of that other war over which he has
assumed command, Gen. Petraeus says:
"Obviously the
trends in Afghanistan have been in the wrong direction.
… You cannot kill or capture your way out of an
insurgency that is as significant as the one in Iraq,
nor, I believe, as large as the one that has developed
in Afghanistan."

"We can`t kill
our way to victory," adds Adm. Michael Mullen,
chairman of the joint chiefs. We are
"running out of
time."

Mullen earlier said he`s
"not convinced we`re winning it in Afghanistan."

The British commander, Brigadier
Mark Carleton-Smith, is

even gloomier. The British people, he says, should
not expect a
"decisive military victory. … We`re not going to win
this war. It`s about reducing it to a manageable level
of insurgency that`s not a strategic threat and can be
managed by the Afghani army."

Carleton-Smith is euphoric
alongside Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, ambassador in Kabul,
who is quoted in a letter to the prime minister as
saying NATO strategy in Afghanistan is
"doomed to fail."

Before either a President Obama or
McCain sends 10,000 more troops into Afghanistan, he
should conduct a review as to whether this war is
winnable, and at what cost in blood, money and years.

Afghanistan is the longest war in
U.S. history. Why have we not yet won? First, because we
lack the forces. In World War I, we put 2 million men in
France in 18 months. In World War II, 16 million served,
with 12 million in uniform at war`s end. Today, we have
31,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Why so few troops? Because, despite
what Americans say, few truly believe the survival of
the Hamad Kharzai regime is vital to our security or
that we would be in mortal peril should the Taliban
return. Indeed, Petraeus says we should seek
"reconciliation,"
presumably with the more moderate of the Taliban.

Converting enemies into allies with
bribes or access to power may not be as dramatic as a
Marine flag-raising on Mount Suribachi. But if
reconciliation can end these wars successfully—assure us
neither nation is used as a base camp for terror—would
that be unacceptable? As Sun Tzu wrote, the greatest
victories are those won without fighting.

For America`s great wars, MacArthur
and Eisenhower were the right generals. For today`s
wars, where the threat is not mortal and there will be
no surrender signing in a railway car at Compiegne or on
the deck of a battleship Missouri, Petraeus seems the
right man—and appears to have no need of an Eisenhower
jacket or corncob pipe.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan
needs

no introduction to VDARE.COM readers;
his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its
Empire and the West Lost the World,
reviewed

here by

Paul Craig Roberts.